To the Viktor Go the Spoilsby Mark Drolette
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 25, 2004

I
was so heartened to read this quote about the presidential election from
Richard Lugar (R-Ind.),
as
reported by Associated Press writer Natasha Lisova: “It is now apparent
that a concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was
enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental
authorities.”

Ha -- at
last! Plainly spoken words from a U.S. Senator -- a Republican, no less --
about the highly suspicious goings-on concerning the election.

And upon
what evidence does Lugar base his charge? Well, for starters, how about the
exit polls that showed the challenger heading the incumbent? And, according
to Lisova, election overseers “said there were extensive indications of vote
fraud, including people apparently voting multiple times and voters being
forced to turn over absentee ballots to state employers.”

Unfortunately, Lugar wasn’t complaining about, nor was Lisova reporting on,
the U.S. presidential election. They both were alluding instead to the
voting concluded this past week to determine the president of Ukraine, and
the good senator made his comments while in Kiev as George Bush’s “envoy.”

It seems
the U.S.-favored candidate who garnered large leads in the exit polls,
Viktor Yuschenko, was allegedly bested in the actual balloting by Ukraine’s
Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych, a pol who both favors, and is favored by,
Russia.

Before we
continue on, though, some housekeeping is in order (mainly to help me
keep things straight). Because of their similar monikers, I think it’ll be
easier to call each Ukrainian candidate simply by his first name. Thus, we
have Viktor and then we have, uh, Viktor.

Well, so
much for that. Perhaps nicknames are best. From here on, we’ll call
Yuschenko “Yushy” and Yanukovych, “Yanni.”

OK, OK.
How about this, then: we’ll refer to Yuschenko, the U.S. guy, as “the U.S.
guy,” and Yanukovych, the Russia guy, as “the Russia guy.”

Da!

Back to
the action: You know, every article about this whole affair should be
entitled “U.S. Reaction to Ukraine Election Drips with Irony.” The Bushies
(rightfully) get their knickers knotted over numerous accounts of balloting
shenanigans in the Ukraine and exit polls that show one thing while
purported vote totals show another, yet when the same thing happens in
America, it suddenly belongs in the realm of Internet mad hatters and
sore losers.

Lisova
reports the U.S. State Department didn’t waste any time chiming in on
reported Ukrainian voting irregularities, immediately (and ominously) urging
“Ukraine’s government to investigate the allegations of fraud or risk a
changed relationship with the United States.” Just to make sure the message
was clear, spokesman Adam Ereli reiterated American consternation and urged
Ukraine “to act to ensure an outcome that reflects the will of the U.S.
government.” (Actually, he said “the will of the Ukrainian people,” but
there’s no proof he wasn’t thinking otherwise.)

(It could
not immediately be confirmed that Ukrainian authorities, finally catching
their collective breath after laughing uncontrollably, responded by oh-so
diplomatically urging U.S. government representatives to “go &#*%
yourselves, you hypocritical &%*#s.”)

It’s
exceedingly rare I agree with the Bush administration on anything, but I do
so here, while still also being fully aware the Bushies couldn’t care less
about democracy and are really solely interested in which foreign
leaders/lackeys best serve the administration’s insane
Project for the
New American Century-influenced vision of global American dominance.

But
fair’s fair, and the fact remains that ample evidence exists of fraud in
Ukraine’s election. And there are also those pesky exit polls, used for
decades as incredibly accurate predictors of winners of political races and
strong checks against voting fraud. In the Ukraine, exit polls showed the
U.S. guy whupping the Russia guy by a mammoth 11 percentage points.

Stateside, none of John Kerry’s exit poll
margins on
November 2 in the all-important swing states were nearly that large, but
still sizable and widespread enough to make the most sane and sober
individual wonder just what the heck happened when the alleged final voting
totals ended up keeping Dubya in the White House.

And, of
course, we had a few voting problems of our own on Election Day: Jim
Crow-reminiscent tales of lines of many hours’ duration and poll
“challengers,” mainly in mostly minority
precincts; electronic voting machines that recorded anywhere from
negative 25 million votes (Youngstown, Ohio) to thousands of
overvotes;
EVMs that automatically
switched the presidential vote on a straight Democratic ticket over to
the GOP (Austin, Texas); too few voting
machines (in mainly Democratic areas, natch); more votes than registered
voters in numerous Ohio
precincts;
poll tapes thrown in the
trash in
Florida; uncounted ballots still being
found; backward-counting
machines; the fact that almost every single “anomaly” reported so far
has been in Bush’s favor…

For a
thinkin’ person, all of this (and so much more) just kinda makes one wonder
why this sort of electoral bunk is correctly repudiated elsewhere but deemed
perfectly acceptable here.

(The most
comprehensive article I’ve seen about U.S. election misdeeds is a
meticulously detailed
piece by Alan Waldman in Online Journal.)

And once
again, those of us who pay attention are left to ask (all together, now):
Where’s the outrage?

In the
Ukraine, that’s where. Yessirree, Bobski, in this topsiest and turviest of
worlds, it is not Americans, the self-proclaimed keepers of liberty’s flame,
who have taken to the streets en masse to protest the theft of democracy,
but rather Ukrainians, folks brand, spankin’ new to the whole concept of
self-governance, willing to gather by the
thousands in bracing winds and freezing temperatures to say (in
Ukrainian, of course): “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take this
anymore!”

Shameless
segue and slight-digression-but-it’s-all-connected-you’ll-see-in-a-moment
moment: The above line (in English, though), is, of course, from the 1976
movie Network, aflick I finally saw for the first time
recently. Man, talk about chilling prescience.

If you
want to know a prime reason why millions of American just sit there like
bumps on logs when they should be screaming bloody murder about how their
country has been hijacked by warmongering greedmeisters, rent Network,
or read its brilliant
script
by
Paddy Chayefski, and tell me if you don’t get bumps of your own.

A
non-stop morality tale about the all-controlling, all-consumptive power of
corporations and their use of television to achieve and maintain planetary
dominance, two scenes in particular stand out and are jaw-droppingly
relevant to today’s happenings.

In the
first, Howard Beale (Peter Finch), a former news anchorman-gone-mad whose
on-air rantings, compellingly delivered and imbued with great, ugly truths,
have garnered a huge following (and terrific ratings for the network), tells
his studio and viewing audience:

“So,
listen to me! Television is not the truth! Television is a goddamned
amusement park, that's what television is!…

We'll
tell you any shit you want to hear! We deal in illusion, man! None of it's
true! But you people sit there-- all of you -- day after day, night after
night, all ages, colors, creeds -- we're all you know. You're beginning to
believe this illusion we're spinning here. You're beginning to think the
tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube
tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your
children like the tube, you think like the tube. This is mass madness, you
maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! We're the
illusions! So turn off this goddam set! Turn it off right now! Turn it
off and leave it off. Turn it off right now, right in the middle of this
very sentence I'm speaking now – “

Beale
then faints and collapses on stage.

In the
other scene, Beale’s latest televised sermon has pricked the rarified world
of the network’s CEO, Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), one of the world’s
privileged few who truly know how things work, by mobilizing enough
Americans to stop a huge business deal (“The Arabs are simply buying us!”
Beale screams to his audience) that will adversely affect Jensen’s ability
to do business as usual. The unhappy executive calls Beale into a massive,
perfectly appointed boardroom (“Valhalla,” he calls it) to divulge the true
gospel:

“You get
up on your little twenty-one inch screen, and howl about America and
democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM
and ITT and A T and T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are
the nations of the world today…

We no
longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a
college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of
business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale!”

Jensen
then tells Beale he wants him to “atone” for his misstep by “preach[ing]
this evangel.” When Beale tremblingly asks why, Jensen tells him: “Because
you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of
the week, Monday through Friday.” Jensen shrewdly figures that not enough
Americans, even when Beale delivers to them the harsh, naked, bald-faced
truth, will rise up to upset the “world as a business” applecart, and
instead just continue on with their television-stupor-induced lives.

He’s
right.

In
today’s America, television spews homogenized, “on-message,” tightly-spun
pap as “news,” and millions upon millions of Americans receive the bulk of
their information this way, hearing what the corporate-run government wants
them to hear, buying what it wants them to buy, remaining silent while it
wants them silent. Certainly other reasons exist for our nation’s current
maladies, but TV is undoubtedly the number one controlling mechanism for the
power structure, and it’s as true today as it’s ever been: whoever controls
the message, controls the power.

But, oh
joy! Oh hope! The Ukrainians are no longer swallowing the hocus bogus
they’ve been force-fed forever. Conditioned for decades by one of history’s
ultimate propaganda machines -- the Soviet Union disinformation apparatus --
it makes their current adamantine refusal to buy the party line that the
Russia guy is the real winner even more remarkable.

So just
how has it come to pass, then, given this history of ongoing institutional
brainwashing far more insidious than what Americans have endured, that
200,000 or so wide-awake Ukrainians are out there in the bitter cold raising
a ruckus about how their election was stolen? (Most are wide awake,
as some have managed to find enough time during the demonstrations, per
Lisova, to partake of “mulled wine and vodka, gulped down with salted
fish.” Mmm, yum-ski.)

Apparently, they’ve decided they truly aren’t gonna take it anymore,
and instead of just going to their windows and shouting out angrily at the
tops of their lungs and then sitting back down to be mesmerized yet again by
the insidious doping tube, they’ve marched right out to the streets to
emphatically show they’ve had enough of the lies and the manipulation and
the being screwed over and over again, and that they take this democracy
stuff pretty damn seriously.

In a true
“isn’t life strange?” moment, it is now the good citizens of Ukraine who are
giving Americans and the rest of the world an object lesson about who is
really supposed to possess and wield the power in a democracy. We could
serve our own critically ill nation well by taking serious note of the
passionate Ukrainians and emulating their patriotic actions.

Well, all
except for the drinking mulled wine and eating salted fish part, that is.

Mark Drolette is a political
satirist/commentator who lives in Sacramento, California. He can be reached
at: drolette@comcast.net.